


under the shape of years (and the weight that brought us here)

by onawingandaswear



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: 20 years later, Amicably Divorced Hunnicutts, B.J. Goes to Maine, B.J. centric, B.J. just has problems, Finestkind Fishmarket and Clinic, Future Fic, Hawkeye has a motorcycle, Late 40s Hunnihawk, McCarthyism, Miscommunication, Multi, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, PTSD, Period Typical Homophobia, Post-War, References to Drug Use, San Francisco's Underground Gay Scene, Supportive Erin, Vietnam War Protests, also actual drug use but it's only MJ, and B.J. realizes he needs to find closure, discussions about mental health, the quintessential hunnicutt lavender marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:21:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29782941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onawingandaswear/pseuds/onawingandaswear
Summary: _____________The impromptu inspection turns into a tune-up, and B.J.’s so thrilled to be in his element, so engrossed in the bike, that it takes a bit to notice Hawkeye’s fallen quiet behind him, dutifully handing over requested tools like they’re in surgery together. It’s perfect. Absolutely every feeling B.J.’s been chasing for years rolled up into the most natural of interactions. B.J. asks for grease rag to wipe his hands. Hawkeye offers a torn strip of terry cloth.Then, out of nowhere, sober as the day they said their not-goodbyes on that strip of blood-soaked dirt in Korea, Hawkeye says, “Erin thought you might be love with me.”For all of his dreaming, imagining how they’d finally find the time to hash things out after so many years apart, B.J. couldn’t have imagined he’d be on his knees in Hawkeye Pierce’s garage, wrist-deep in the guts of a ’59 Triumph Bonneville, betrayed by his own flesh and blood._______San Francisco, 1972. Erin Hunnicutt drags her father to a war protest and sets in motion a chain of events that will bridge eighteen years of radio silence between B.J. Hunnicutt and Benjamin Franklin Pierce.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B.J. Hunnicutt/Original Male Character (Passing), past B.J Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt
Comments: 16
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun writing this and I'm hoping you'll all enjoy it as well. Title borrowed lovingly from the song 'Higher' by The Naked and the Famous.

* * *

* * *

* * *

Thirty-nine hours straight. Ambulance after chopper after bus. Bodies upon bodies with nothing to do but power through, Potter even breaking out the pep-pills halfway in to keep them on their feet. At the finish, B.J. has settled onto a bench beside Hawkeye in the scrub room too tired to do anything more than lean against one another; Hawkeye’s head resting on B.J.’s shoulder, both men long since abandoned by their fellow staff.

“Darling,” Hawkeye’d whispered. “Tell the driver to bring the car around. All this dancing has left my soles in shambles.”

“I’ll get right on it, Sweetheart.” B.J. had murmured, too exhausted to fathom the consequences of reaching up to lace his fingers into Hawkeye’s sweat-damp hair. “I’ll call ahead and be sure the butler has dinner waiting.”

Hawkeye didn’t open his eyes, just leaned into the steady pressure of B.J.’s fingers, angling his face closer, and B.J. lifted his other hand to hold Hawkeye steady. “I’m so tired, Beej,” he’d breathed with a with such bone-deep exhaustion that his placid tone edged into something painful, “I want to go home, now. Please, send me home.”

“Soon,” he’d promised, as if he’d the power to do anything of the sort. “Soon, you’ll get your points, and you’ll wake up in Crabapple Cove to the ocean, and your French toast, and all of this will be a distant memory.” 

It had been so easy to lean in; before he’d realized what he was doing, before Hawkeye registered B.J. wasn’t just another nurse. Even so, they didn’t exactly _stop_. Seconds felt like minutes, and in Korea minutes were practically hours; it was an affair compressed into the whole of a single moment. When they parted, Hawkeye’s forehead pressed against B.J.’s — so close the man was more blur than person — Hawkeye had whispered softly, with those chapped, kiss-red lips, “You can’t do that again, Beej.”

“What, _Ben_ , you gonna stop me?”

He’d intended the question to be swarthy, wielding Hawk’s given name like a weapon, but instead his voice came across almost desperate, pleading, and Hawkeye allowed him to steal one moment more before pulling away, reaching up to cup B.J.’s jaw, focused like trying to hot press the moment into his memory.

“Darling,” he’d sighed, slipping away behind his humor. “The _car._ ”

B.J. sobered, following Hawk’s lead, and the palm cupped against his face flattened to give two quick pats against his stubbled cheek; immediately restoring the boundary between them. When they left the OR that night, it was as if they’d left a part of themselves in the laundry bin with their bloody scrubs. A second skin, perhaps. The blinders removed from their mutual understandings of one another.

They didn’t touch like that, again, but there were moments of mutual indiscretion. Hints of what could have been if either of them had pushed a little harder. Gazes that lingered beyond strictly appropriate. Magazines of a salacious sort, dogeared on just the right pages, followed by quiet moments working out ‘frustrations’ within conspicuous earshot. Hands on hands. Embraces that lingered. Any and every excuse for physical contact. B.J. did his damnedest to try and convince Hawkeye that he wanted more, he could _be_ more, but the man wouldn’t hear it.

One evening, caught between shellings and spats of dysentery, B.J. moved into the space between their cots, close enough to smell the gin on Hawkeye’s breath.

“I’ll drop it, if you can swear to me, here and now, that you don’t feel this, too. Don’t want this as badly as I do. We can figure it out —”

“Beej. You leave it here.” Hawkeye left no room for misinterpretation, leaning in close like they did that night, but there was no comfort to be taken from the action. “War does funny things to people, and I will not allow you to throw away a good thing because you’re lonely and confused.”

B.J. hadn’t been confused since he was fifteen, he says as much, but he allows Hawkeye have the comfort of being the protector of B.J.’s honor; even if it’s wholly unnecessary. The matter wasn’t settled and he wanted it to be so badly it colored every story moment of his existence. He thought, at the very least, he’d have time. Time to prove that he wasn’t just blowing steam with a bunkmate. This was real. _He_ was real.

He was so _close_.

* * *

* * *

* * *

B.J. Hunnicutt is 46. He’s a doctor with a thriving private practice that relies on keeping the peace between the beatniks, students, and white collar families that fill in the margins of the careful life he’s built for himself. He is also a veteran of a foreign war, newly separated from his wife of twenty-one years, and reluctantly entertaining his daughter’s request to attend a anti-war protest in spitting distance of the hospital B.J. spent his residency at. Surrounding them are hordes of students from Stanford and Golden State College. Intermingling are men in battered fatigues and crisp uniforms — soldiers, veterans — some covered in patches and paint, some missing limbs, demanding an end to the suffering, the loss of life for God and Country. B.J. doesn’t think he even _has_ his old fatigues anymore. Not even his Class As.

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

B.J. blinks out of his preemptive regret and looks to his daughter, Erin, just shy of 20, a student herself like so many others protesting. She’s smart. Too smart, really, and she’s been able to read between the lines since before she was technically able to read.

“That guy is staring at you.”

Erin gestures to a small group of vets in repurposed olive drab bearing symbols that, in a perfect world, B.J. wouldn’t recognize. Indeed, there is one large man looking right at him, practically mad-dogging. When B.J. makes eye contact, his intense expression vanishes, replaced by the broad, welcoming smile of familiarity. B.J. doesn’t recognize the large-set man as a patient, which means their paths likely crossed somewhere far less civil. Given they’re at rally to protest anti-communist actions in Vietnam, he can draw appropriate conclusions.

“Hey Doc!”

It takes three long strides for the man to be upon him, grabbing his arm and pulling him in for a full-body hug, slapping his free hand on B.J.’s back like they grew up together and weren’t just stationed in the same country during the same war.

“I’m sorry, I don’t —“

“Will Peterson. _Lieutenant_. You patched me up in ’53. Did a damn good job, too,” the man huffs against B.J.’s ear, pulling away to immediately lift his shirt, exposing a long, pale scar along his sizable belly, bisecting a faded USMC tattoo B.J.’d probably had to slice through to save his life.

“Boys!” Peterson redirects over his shoulder. “Come meet Doctor Hunnicutt!”

“You remember my name?” B.J. doesn’t know why this information surprises him so much; maybe it’s just guilt because he can’t quite recall the man as a patient.

“Damn right I do,” Peterson gives him a good shake. “So out of it on morphine I kept calling you ‘Honeybutt’ in my head.”

“Wait, _Honeybutt_?” Erin parrots in delight, reminding B.J. of her presence. _“Really?”_

B.J. remembers now, very clearly in fact, and resists the urge to cover his face as he’s inundated with memories. “Oh, yes, _you_ ,” he laughs, “Peterson! You caused me a lot of grief that month. Took weeks to shake that nickname.”

“All in good fun, Doc. And, if you don’t mind me saying, was not exactly an inaccurate statement.”

B.J. forces a laugh to cover the heat rising in his cheeks and gestures quickly to Erin. “Peterson, this is my daughter.” Immediately, Peterson goes pink as Erin flashes B.J. a mischievous look.

“I’m telling mom that one.”

“Weren’t you going to meet up with your classmates?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe, _sir_.”

“Don’t call me ‘sir’.” B.J. mutters, wincing at his own callousness, but Peterson — and the rest of the men surrounding him — just laugh it off. “She doesn’t call me ‘sir’,” he defends. “I’m not that kind of father.”

Erin grins and amends, “ _Yes, Ma’am,_ ” before taking off toward the crowd, her long, strawberry-blonde hair flying behind like a cape.

“Curfew’s eleven!” B.J. shouts at her retreating back. “Any later I’ll assume you’ve been arrested.”

“Look out for cops,” Peterson advises sternly, not to Erin, but to B.J. “You see blue you boogie, you got me? They’ve got in for us lately.”

“What, Vets?”

Peterson taps a finger over a patch on his jacket featuring an inverted triangle. B.J. wonders if he’s that obvious, and almost as if reading his mind, Peterson explains, “Your girl wouldn’t have dragged you over here if you weren’t gonna be friendly. Or cut out like that. Hope I didn’t, uh, speak too frankly.”

“Not at all. Nothing she hasn’t suspected for years. I think.” B.J. struggles, gesturing tightly to the mass around them. “I’m a little out of my element, you’ll have to excuse me.”

Peterson throws his arms wide like a burly teddy-bear of a man and pulls B.J. in for another hug he doesn’t fight; B.J. hadn’t realized exactly how much he’d been missing real human contact.

“We get it, Doc. Now that you’re by your lonesome, you want something to take the edge off?”

“Oh, no drugs please.”

“Not that kind of edge. Come grab a drink.”

The guys laugh and B.J. finds himself being guided out of the street and into bar off the main drag that’s all muted lighting and exposed brick populated by several dozen people, mostly men in various uniforms; he realizes, between the set dressing and the clientele the bar is a makeshift VFW servicing a very specific clientele.

“Someone get this man a drink!” Peterson hollers. “Handsome bastard saved my life in Korea!”

An aborted cheer goes up among the small crowd, including a few ‘boo’s directed at the former Marine, and B.J. can feel the heat in his cheeks at being singled out for a time in his life he’s spent so long trying not to think about.

Barely six hours ago he’d be thumbing through the morning paper, resolutely ignoring Erin’s conspicuous hints about her plans for the afternoon. A bare clapboard sign in the living room hallway, a bag full of brightly colored paints. B.J.’s old canteen refitted with a macrame shoulder-strap abandoned beside the sink.

“You look like you’re going to war, bug.”

“Who says I’m not?”

He’d been kidding, of course; Erin had walked into the kitchen dressed more for an evening at the movies than a Spring war protest, done up in denim and a flowy cotton blouse that she’d probably stolen from her mother, standing even taller than her already impressive 5’10” in a pair of wood soled platform shoes. She preened anyway, and asked if he still had his fatigue jacket from Korea. She’d wanted to wear it in a show of solidarity. B.J. said he didn’t —mostly because he hadn’t wanted to go rustling in the attic for a footlocker he hadn’t touched in a decade —but moreso because he wasn’t certain he could handle seeing his daughter in that very specific shade of olive green. Not his baby girl. Not now.

Then, she’d asked him to come, and he couldn’t think of a reason to say no.

Now, he’s in a bar full of war vets of a particular bent, one of whom is a former patient intent on getting B.J. shitfaced, and B.J.’s pretty inclined to let him; listening intently as the man recounts his time in Korea to their small contingent of vets, all eager to hear war stories from like-minded peers.

B.J. learns that Peterson survived the removal of roughly four feet of small intestine (by B.J.’s own hands) and is now a mechanic in Noe Valley. He has a bulldog named Peaches and a partner working in Oakland. He explains all of this with an air of such gratitude that B.J. feels like the B.J. Peterson _thinks_ he’s talking to can’t possibly be real.

Three beers in, still fully cognizant of his surroundings, B.J. slides his dog-tags out from under his shirt, clutches them tight enough the metal bites into his palms, and forces himself to pull the chain over his head, handing it to Peterson. It’d taken a lot to dig them out of storage, even more to wear them again, but if not now, when?

“You remember another doctor?” B.J. offers, every word sticking in his throat like he’s baiting a hook for himself. “Tall. Dark hair. Handsome. _Funny_. Hit on anything that moved?”

“I remember quite a few lookers from Korea, but there were only a few chances where I was laid up with nothing to do but stare, so yes, I remember a pair of flirty doctors with wicked tongues.” Peterson takes the tags with a reverence he hadn’t possessed only moments prior, and B.J. tries to affirm, shamed at the way his voice seizes when Peterson’s eyes flash when he realizes the tags aren’t identical. “Aw, fuck. Doc.”

“It wasn’t. . . ” B.J. shakes his head, unwelcome emotion burning hot behind his eyes. “Nothing came of it. You know? That’s as far as I got.”

A chorus of sympathy rises around B.J. — mostly from the young men eavesdropping, several of whom seem even younger than Erin — but there are enough of his own brand of vet. Korea, a smattering of gents from WWII; and the men don’t let him leave, plying him with booze and companionship. The more he drinks, the more he talks — about his family, the war, most damningly, about Hawkeye — and they _love_ it. They offer their own tales of wartime romances, difficulties upon returning home, building families and lives in defiance of their shared traumas. Some, though, they don’t commiserate about moving on, because they haven’t. Guys, B.J. imagines, like Hawkeye who couldn’t shake the demons but somehow persevered anyway.

“Honestly, what more could you have done?” Peterson asks when the alcohol has polished the rough edges of B.J.’s grief. “You were there for him, and you tried. Sometimes, you just can’t help. I’m not trying to make light, but, we’ve all seen it. We’ve all known someone that should have made it out intact that didn’t.”

“I tried.” B.J. defends lamely, shrugging with false confidence. “God knows I tried to get him to California, I told him he could stay with me, find him a job, and it’d be okay, that Peg, my wife, Peg, she _got it_ , you know? She understood. He didn’t believe me. Or, he didn’t _want_ me. Gave me the tag and — ” B.J. gestures into the air wildly with his his free hand, like a drunk bird taking flight.

“Fuck. _Fuck_.” Wiler, a willowy kid only about a year out from his tour in Vietnam, leans back in his seat opposite them and covers his face with his palms, groaning. “He just left you? Like nothing?”

“I don’t blame him. He had a run in at the end,” B.J. takes another drink, if only for something to do. “It wasn’t his fault, but . . . there was an incident. Spent almost a month locked up in Seoul because he’d repressed this whole thing. He’d have gotten a Section 8 if he hasn’t been such a skilled surgeon.”

B.J. doesn’t mention that he’s long since reconciled that Hawkeye might have gotten the help he’d needed if B.J. hadn’t tried to slip away with his misprinted discharge papers. B.J. remembers those last few days before the ceasefire, starts laughing around the rim of his beer bottle.

“I got back to camp and they told me they’d been shelled for days because a soldier drove into camp on a _tank_ and ICOR wouldn’t send anyone to move the damn thing. Hawk went out himself, popped in and drove it out to the trash dump so the Chinese would stop firing on the camp.”

“Wait, wait, how did a draft surgeon know how to drive a tank?” The bartender asks, leaning in. “Please tell me he ended up with a Star for that. At least.”

B.J.’s laughter catches in his throat as he realizes, no, Hawkeye didn’t get a medal. In fact, he’s not sure Captain B.F. Pierce was awarded _any_ commendations. Chief Surgeon of a M.A.S.H. unit for almost the entirety of the Korean War, saved god knows how many lives in the field and on the table, and, then, there’s B.J., with his damn Bronze Star for cutting a rope and leaving a kid to die.

“No.” B.J. sobers. “He didn’t. Not for that, at least. Maybe if the war hadn’t ended.”

The bartender clucks like a disapproving mother and turns away to grab a bottle of scotch off the back wall. “Section 8 or no, if any of my boys had found the balls to hop in a tank to lure enemy fire, I wouldn’t have just found a medal, I’d have made sure they bumped his commission, too.”

“ _Major_ Benjamin Franklin Pierce,” B.J. tries, sounding out the title. “God, he’d have hated that so much.”

“Are you talking about Benjy?”

When B.J. turns to the source of the question, damn near the entire party turns to look as well.

“ _Benjy_?”

“Yeah. ‘Big Benjy’ Pierce? Lanky kid from Vermont?”

“Maine, and ‘ _went by_ ’,” B.J. corrects. “I think.”

“No shit —he was in my company when we rolled into Berlin!”

“Berlin?” B.J. sets his bottle down, nearly misses the bar top completely as he spins off his stool, unsteady on his feet for reasons beyond inebriation.

“Yeah, man. Wasn’t there long, I think he swapped in a few months before we got orders to go home. Funny kid. Sorry to hear he’s gone.”

“No, he’s not gone, he just,” B.J. echoes, trying to force himself to sobriety. “In Germany? He never told me that. Said Korea was his second war but I thought he was kidding. He never talked about it.”

“That explains how he knew how to drive the tank.” The bartended comments, reaching out to move B.J.’s bottle so it doesn’t topple. “He probably got a deferment that came due. A lot of boys showed up at the finish when we were prepping for Pacific escalation. Not much combat, though.”

“Oh, we saw combat,” the man chides. “Skirmishes. Snipers. One day the Colonel just lined us up and counted off. Said ‘ _if you’re a five, you’re a medic now_ ’ and took ‘em for training. Utah — this big guy with sausage fingers, didn’t have a stomach for blood — he goes to Benjy and says, ‘ _I’ll give you ten dollars if you take my spot_ ’. Benjy didn’t even take the money, said he was in med school and he’d be happy for the hands-on experience; but, Lord help me, that boy could _bitch_. The mouth on that punk, he never shut up.”

“You couldn’t have been much older than he was.” B.J. tries to logic out the timeline.

“Yeah, but I’d been in Europe for two years. He’d been out of basic for all of two months. Good thing the war ended when it did or he’d have landed that sarcastic ass of his in a military prison.” The man chuckles somberly. “God rest his soul. Sorry to hear he’s gone.”

“Again. Not dead.”

“Then why are you moping like he is?”

“Benjy’s not _dead_ ,” Peterson laments on B.J.’s behalf, getting an arm around his shoulders. “He’s just _straight_.”

“Oh, so, good as, then.”

B.J. laughs with the small group, hoarding camaraderie like an illegal narcotic as he tries to picture Hawkeye in the European theater, folding the new information into his working memory of the man and allowing the context to reframe several of their more painful moments together. Eventually the alcohol does its job and B.J. finds himself sufficiently drunk, checking his watch every few minute to gauge when he needs to go hunting for his erstwhile daughter.

“You looking for a ride tonight, Doc?”

“Mmmm, no thank you I have a car.” B.J. hums, clocking that Peterson isn’t actually offering a ride home when the man grins and angles his head toward a handsome man at the end of the bar with a strong jaw and dark eyes, his broad shoulders wrapped up in the olive Class A’s of Vietnam draftees. He waves. B.J. waves back.

“I have places to be,” B.J. protests, though his heart isn’t in it.

“Who doesn’t?” Peterson plays dumb, polishing off his own beer and smacking B.J. lightly on the thigh. “Didn’t you tell your kid 11? That’s a whole hour. Find a new war buddy to take your mind off the old one, eh? I’ll tell the guys to keep an eye out for your squirt.”

B.J. rests his glass on the bartop, straightens his shirt, and sidelines his better judgement.

After so many years playing house, he deserves to have a little fun.

* * *

* * *

“So, did you have a good time?” Erin asks as they’re walking to the car, parked nearly a mile out to avoid suspicion.

“Don’t think swapping war stories classifies as ‘fun’,” B.J. floats, gripping the last threads of his sobriety, high on a series of events he can’t explain to his nineteen year old daughter in good conscience. “But it was nice to talk. Made some friends, even. Also, might need you to drive, Bug.”

“Dad!”

“You told me to enjoy myself!” B.J. chides. “I enjoyed myself.”

 _“_ Clearly. _”_

Erin falls silent for almost two whole blocks, only the noise of passing vehicles and the clip-clopping of her wooden soles offering a soundtrack to the evening.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

The evening has dulled him enough that B.J.’s proud his reaction isn’t simply to wince.

“Which friend.”

“Your friend,” Erin insists. “The guy mom used to tell me about? Hawkeye? I know you cared about him.”

It’s a familiar dance, one he’s known for longer than he likes to admit. His daughter will poke and prod, trying to uncover something new, waiting for him to slip up and admit to a previously unknown character trait.

“Well, for a good while there he was my best friend.”

 _“Not like that and you know it,”_ she sasses under her breath, likely not expecting a reaction beyond the usual avoidance, but tonight’s a special night. B.J. slows to a stop and once Erin realizes her father isn’t still beside her, she spins back around, expression slack with concern that she’s about to be in for a tongue-lashing of the highest order. Casting a furtive glance around the empty street, B.J. gives the last dregs of his liquor-legs the reins.

“What do you want me to say? I don’t think you want the truth, not really. Who would?”

In response, Erin opens her mouth and closes it again like a state fair guppy. B.J. keeps a smile behind his lips and looks up past the street lamps to see if he can find any stars. Too much cloud cover, too much light pollution.

“I do,” Erin shoves her hands into her cardigan pockets against the chill and strides back to him, posture determined like she’s suddenly grasped that this isn’t a conversation that can happen sober in the light of day. “I really do! When I came to find you that big Marine sounded like he knew all about Hawkeye, and you won’t even tell me anything. It’s like you have this great tragedy in your life and it’s not just the _war_.”

A laugh catches in B.J.’s throat at the drama of it all.

“Oh, so they’ve got you on the classics, now, do they? Did you finally read the Iliad?”

Erin flusters in a manner that hasn’t changed since she was a toddler; red rising in her cheeks, nose scrunching up. “That’s not — No! I read that in high school!”

“Right, right.”

“ _But,_ ” she hazards, leaning into him as they walk, “I have this Professor that’s been offering a supplemental history course and one of the themes we talked about was how, um, really intense relationships come out of shared trauma.”

“Hell of a topic. Got room for auditors?”

_“Dad.”_

“So, you’re saying you’re learning all about war and reading these accounts and you realize you’ve got a perfectly serviceable nutcase at home who seems weirdly devastated about his time in Korea and a war buddy he doesn’t like to talk about, right? I’m not going to end up in any term papers, am I?”

“No, never.” Erin loops her arm through B.J.’s and tucks in close, offering comfort and taking it herself, before smacking her free hand gently against his chest, over where the dog-tags are resting. “There’s a story, and I know it hurts you.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Erin.”

“ _Satisfaction_ brought him back.”

They stride slowly, probably looking more like a couple than a father and daughter, which only rankles B.J. further. Someone could pass, think a relationship of a man and a woman half his age would be perfectly serviceable but god forbid B.J. be walking arm-in-arm with —

“Consider this a freebee.” B.J. interrupts his own thoughts. “One honest conversation about something I’d rather not speak of again.”

“Dad, you don’t actually have to,” Erin assuages, her courage leaving her in the face of B.J.’s resolution. “I just thought, if you got it out, maybe it’d hurt less.”

She’s not wrong, but her motives are as much for her benefit as his. He can respect that. Erin waits. Patiently. Expectantly. B.J. doesn’t know if he can give her what she wants, even what he gave the boys at the bar. But, he can try.

“It always hurts, bug. I lost my best friend,” B.J. repeats. “That wasn’t a lie.”

“So, you never . . .?”

“I was never unfaithful to your mother.” B.J. says stiffly, and Erin looks down, chastened. “Nothing happened between us. Not really. But we both . . . wanted more than we could have.”

B.J. takes a breath and tries to reason how much information is too much information, which is difficult enough when the subject isn’t so damning.

“When I met your mother I felt like I’d found the one person on this earth who saw me for who I really was. Faults and all, because she had her own, too. Back then, after the war, the big one, some people just settled, but that wasn’t us. We never settled for each other, not like some of the —“ B.J. forces himself not to finish, not to expose secrets that aren’t his to tell. “I know what you must think. That this was all some sort of, well, ruse, treading water pretending, but we were happy with each other. We were happy. We _are_ happy. And you, you were everything we’d ever wanted. Never doubt that.”

“But not _everything_.” Erin needles, and B.J. takes a moment to collect himself.

“When I was drafted, I thought it’d be back quickly, that it’d be over before I was even out of basic. That’s what everyone told me. ‘ _You’ll be home before she’s teething! The police action won’t last longer than a few months_ ’. What the hell did we know?”

“So, I get over there after basic and,” B.J. swallows hard, blinking back sudden tears remembering that first day. “Erin, I hadn’t been in Korea for four hours and I watched a man send his daughters into a minefield to sweep. You were only a few months old, so perfect and tiny, I couldn’t imagine anything ever happening to you, and I watched one of those girls lose her foot so the family cow didn’t have to. Not long after, and I’m talking less than an hour later, we were hunkered under a transport truck watching kids lose limbs to mortar fire. I went to help this one man and he —“ B.J. blinks up at the sky, forcing back his tears because he needs to say it; realizes he’s _never_ said it. “He had no _face_ ,” he grits through his teeth, refusing to look at Erin. “I was sick until there was nothing left in me. Hawkeye, though, he was right there, he comforted me. Kept telling me it’d be okay. _I’d_ be okay. I’d get used to it, like that was a good thing.”

“Oh, _Daddy.”_ Erin whispers, clutching his arm tight as the tears come.

“We spent two years in each other’s pockets, Bug. Every day. Slept in the same tent, ate the same breakfast, worked the same shifts. I don’t think I’d have gotten through it if not for him. I really don’t. He was funny, he had morals, a sanity that no one else seemed to possess, and he was a hell of a surgeon. I was proud to call him my friend.”

“And you loved him.”

“I did. God help me, I did.” B.J. sighs, looking up once more, searching for constellations he hasn’t seen since Korea. “Took me a while but I figured it out.”

“Did he love you, too?”

“I hoped he did, but I was married, and he, well, I don’t know what he thought, exactly. I just know when we had a chance to speak about it, he didn’t want to hear what I had to say. He was just worried I’d ruin my life.”

“We didn’t talk again. Didn’t write. We just,” B.J. can still hear Hawkeye’s voice in his ear, hot with anger. “We left it there.”

B.J. palms the car keys into her hand and moves to the passenger door.

“That can’t be the end.”

“It was.” B.J. lies. “We said goodbye on the chopper pad. That was the last time I saw him.”

He’s not drunk enough to tell her the truth; that somehow their separate flights made it into Guam on the same day, and B.J.’d had his chance for one last honest conversation that ended with Hawkeye’s dog-tags abandoned on a sticky table-top in an Officer’s Club, and the cold, bitter realization that B.J. was utterly alone in his affections.

He meets Erin’s gaze across the roof of the car — a ’68 Ford Mustang he’d always intended to give to her as a graduation present —her eyes huge and sympathetic, and motions for her to get in. She obliges.

He can’t tell her the truth. She doesn’t deserve the weight of it.

* * *

They’re crossing the bridge home when Erin pipes up again, and B.J. misses the question,chasing barge lights on the water and the lingering taste of indecency in his mouth.

“What’s that?”

“Now that you and mom are spending time apart, do you think you’d ever reach out to Hawkeye? For, I don’t know, closure?”

B.J. knows this is the natural consequence of his abridged story. The illusion of lost love waiting to be reunited. “For all I know he’s happily married with a couple of kids,” B.J. placates, swallowing the tightness in his throat.

“Or, he’s like you.” Erin insists. “Thinking about what could have been. I mean, closure doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing. What’s the worst that could happen? You don’t talk for twenty years?”

“When did you get so smart.” B.J. clenches his fists, if only to mask the thrum of _want_ that shoots through him as the thought that somewhere out there, Hawkeye Pierce is thinking back on Korea wishing he’d taken what B.J.’d tried so desperately to offer. “Can’t be from me. Must be on your mom’s side.”

“Aren’t you a doctor?” Erin accuses. “Not that mom’s not amazing.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, you don’t need to be intelligent to be a doctor.”

 _I’m proof of that_ , B.J. doesn’t say as he flips on the radio, catching the tail end of Casey Casem introducing _‘Alone Again (Naturally)_ ’, and Erin scoffs loudly, before the intro can ratchet up, reaching over to change the station.

“I like that song.” B.J. protests.

“Because you’re depressed. We’re not driving home from a protest and dealing with _this_. Plus, I’m driving,” she turns the dial until The Hollies start crooning through the speakers. “There. Better.”

Funnily enough, listening to a song about a police raid on a prohibition bar does make B.J. feel a little bit better. He cracks the window and breathes the salty bay air, losing himself in the music, even if it’s only to escape the minefield of memories featuring one Benjamin Franklin Pierce.

* * *

* * *

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s no easy way to broach the topic of their parting. On the whole, it’s a rather forgivable exchange — two men, finally heading home from war, exhausted, fragile, having one last row before parting to live out their lives on opposite ends of a continent. He knows there’s more between them, even still. Proof they meant something to one another beyond simple friendship. B.J. resists the urge to reach for the dog tags beneath his shirt, the pin on a grenade that is what could have been. 
> 
> God willing, what might still be.

From the hallway, B.J. can hear the rhythmic, rapid squeaking of wood coming from the kitchen; when he turns the corner, balancing a empty coffee mug on top of small pile of dishes rescued from his study, he sees Erin, one hand laced anxiously in her hair as she bounces her knee so rapidly B.J.’s afraid she, and the table, are about to take off.

“Don’t be mad,” Erin says the moment he comes into the room, not looking at him. “ _Promise_ you won’t be mad.”

“Okay, well, you’re off to a bad start, there,” B.J. says, easing his tower of plates into the sink. “No. What happened?”

“I thought, since you and Mom have been separated and things are, you know, _different_ , with the world, and me, and _you_ ,” she worries her lip and looks down at an open letter B.J. hadn’t initially clocked when he’d walked in. “I wrote to your _friend._ ”

It’s late enough in the afternoon B.J. can’t excuse his willful confusion as brain fog. There are very few people that Erin wound refer to in such a manner, fewer still that would require such nervous preamble. “Erin,” he asks. “What friend?”

“Um . . . the one in Maine?”

B.J.’s heart jumps into his throat, and he’s unable to determine right off if the reaction is one of dread or excitement. He takes a breath, composes himself, and settles on dread. Definitely dread. Fuck. _Fuck_.

“Erin, why? _Why_ would you do that?”

“You obviously weren’t going to and I wanted to know if he was like you said!”

“Is he?”

“Not really,” she answers candidly, turning bodily in her chair to face him, offering the paper. “He’s just a doctor.”

“I’m just a doctor,” B.J. reasons, scanning the paper, taking in Hawkeye’s familiar scratchy penmanship and finds a very basic correspondence. Exactly what B.J.’d expect to write himself if he received a letter from the grown child of long estranged ‘friend’. “Why are you panicking?

“Well, that would be because,” Erin shakes the loose envelope, heavy with another piece of paper. “He sent this, too. It’s for you.” Sure enough, inside the torn envelope is another smaller envelope addressed to _Dr. B.J. Hunnicutt, Esq._

His hands definitely aren’t shaking when he breaks the seal.

_BJ,_

_It’s been a long time!_

_While I am certain you didn’t intend for Erin to reach out to me after having a heart-to-heart about your time in Korea, I’m exceptionally grateful she did. Your daughter is quite perceptive, and if she’s anything like her father, she’s a menace I’m certain I’d love to meet in person. If you’re amenable —and if you find yourself on this side of the world — I’d enjoy a chance to catch up. My number is below._

_Regrettably yours,_

_Hawkeye_

“You’re going, right?”

B.J. blinks up from the letter, dazed like he’s just woken from a dream, and finds Erin hovering over his shoulder, snooping.

“Hey!”

“He invited you.”

“Okay, Erin, time for an etiquette lesson, something like this,” B.J. holds up the second note, giving it a vigorous shake, “is not an invitation.”

“Dad, it’s not the 1940s,” she insists, thoroughly unimpressed. “That is one hundred percent an invitation. He’s asking if you’re ‘amenable’, that’s code for ‘if you still like me’, he says he’d ‘love’ to meet me —“

“Bug.”

“— Regrettably _Yours_? Dad, come _on_.”

“You are reading way too much into this,” B.J. insists, trying to keep his anger in check.

“And you’re not reading enough! He didn’t have to write you at all. I didn’t ask him to! I was just asking about specialties and where he went to med school!” Erin raises her hands dramatically, physically impeding further response. “I’ll make you a bet,” she announces, pulling up to her full height. “Or, I’ll trade you.”

“I don’t like this.” B.J. cautions. “What will you trade me, and why.”

“If you go to Maine, and you finally settle whatever happened between you and Hawkeye Pierce, I’ll commit to going pre-Med.”

There are certain perks that come from raising another human being, like the ability to read intent, and everything in Erin’s posture tells B.J. that she likely had already made the decision without telling him and is now only using the information for leverage. He’s never been so proud.

“That’s a hell of an offer,” B.J. doesn’t bother to hide his suspicion. “Hell of a commitment. Moreso, a hell of a request.”

“All you have to do is talk to him,” she implores. “That’s it.”

“Okay, real talk. Why are you so invested in this?”

“Huh?” Her resolution seems to falter a touch. “What do you mean?”

“You’re betting the course of your future on my reconnecting with someone I haven’t seen since you were a baby.” B.J. explains, as patiently as he can when he wants to break everything he can get his hands on. “You _know_ I haven’t told you everything about what happened overseas, but you’re still pushing me toward some kind of reunion. Why?”

Erin lowers her arms, not quite chastened but somewhere close enough that B.J. feels he’s sufficiently reinstated the father-daughter boundary they’re supposed to have to maintain a healthy relationship.

“Mom told me you were a different person before the war,” Erin broaches softly. “Not better, or worse, just different; and the reason you were different was because you’d fallen in love with someone that couldn’t love you back.”

B.J. inhales sharply, fighting an immediate, damning burn behind his eyes. He’s miscalculated badly.

“Not didn’t, _couldn’t_ ,” she continues, “because you were married. And now, none of the things that were problems back then are still problems. I’m not a baby, mom’s off adventuring with Aunt Elise, and I know you said you’d stay to make sure I got on alright at school, but you should be happy, too. You don’t go out, you don’t date, you just hang out with me, and I’m pretty great but there’s a whole big world out there. Maybe your happy _doesn’t_ involve this guy Hawkeye, but not dealing with it is clearly holding you back — ”

He can’t listen to this anymore. “Okay.” He interrupts.

“What?”

“You’re right,” B.J. relents, embracing the fact that his grown daughter has just read him the riot act and he was deserving of every word. “The whole point of your mother and I separating was each of us getting a chance to be happy, and I’m not doing myself any favors moping around the house, but you don’t have to go to pre-med, Erin. Not on my account. Five generations of doctors would be pretty neat, though.”

“So, you’re _going_?”

In the back of his mind, B.J. imagines rolling up on the Pierce residence and being greeted by a gaggle of gangly teens and their buxom mother. Getting an answer to a question he never wanted answered before he hits the front gate. He’s touched that kind of devastation before, and he wonders if he really has it in him to do it all over again.

"I'm not sure I have much of a choice." He reasons. "Certainly don't have anymore excuses."

* * *

* * *

* * *

The return address on Erin’s letter from Hawkeye leads B.J. to a small home off Main Street in Spruce Harbor, Maine, with a large white wooden sign embedded in the grass reading _‘Finestkind Fishmarket and Clinic, est. 1964’ —_ two smaller signs dangling below bearing _‘B.F. Pierce, M.D.’_ and _‘Anthony Holcombe, M.D.’,_ respectively.

A teeny-tiny private practice, just like Hawkeye wanted. Though, B.J. is stumped by the sign, and spends a solid minute behind the wheel of his rented Chrysler trying to figure out what the hell the original joke was that precipitated allowing a such a bizarre name to stand for so long. B.J. kills the engine and steels himself, taking one deep belly breath, then another. And another. And one more for good measure.

“C’mon, Hunnicutt,” he chastises, watching his knuckles go white against the steering wheel. “It’s just Hawk.”

A small bell above the door rings when B.J. enters, and he’s half expecting the open displays of a fishmarket. Instead, he’s greeted with a waiting room fashioned out of a repurposed living area, complete with bright windows, and what little wall space is available is populated by photographs and certificates like a fascinating proof of life. A majority of the frames feature another doctor, Holcombe, but there’s enough Hawkeye for comfort. The most recent pictures, in bright color, show his salt and pepper hair has gone almost completely grey, but he’s no longer scarecrow thin, hunched under the weight of the world. There are no ghosts hiding behind his bright eyes or wide smile. A far cry from the emotionally wounded young man B.J. had left behind that last night in Guam.

Speaking of Korea, there are three group photos mounted near the receptionist’s desk. B.J. clocks ‘4077’ at a distance and finds a camp shot from before his time, featuring the late Henry Blake and B.J.’s own oblivious nemesis, ‘Trapper’ John McIntyre, beside a grinning Hawkeye. The next is the group photo they sent for the stateside reunion; B.J. finds himself quickly, heart aching a touch when he registers the way Hawkeye is posed beside him, identical to the way he looked beside McIntyre.

The third photo is of a group of men huddled around a Sherman tank. B.J. recognizes the man from the protest, Cartwright, who claimed he served with ‘Benjy’ Pierce in 1945; then he finds Hawkeye, younger than B.J.’d ever known him, by that same goofy grin, bright teeth standing out against his dirty skin. He had served in World War II, and he’d never said a word about it.

“Sir? Is there something I can help you with?”

B.J. turns to find the woman behind the desk watching him curiously. Given he’s hovering silently in an otherwise empty clinic waiting room, he can’t blame her for being suspicious.

“I’d like to be seen by Doctor Pierce, if possible. Benjamin Pierce?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” her cheeriness falters, “Doctor Pierce isn’t actually available. He doesn’t take walk-ins on Fridays. I can schedule something for next week if you like?”

“ _Rats_. I just drove in from Portland to see him.”

“Oh, why so far?”

B.J. debates lying, making up some story about a heretofore unknown specialty of Hawkeye’s requiring him to seek out the man is desperation, but he realizes the truth suits the situation just fine as is.

“Honestly, I didn’t realize how far Portland actually was when I flew in. I’ve never been on this half of the country. I’m an old friend of Hawkeye’s and I was hoping to surprise him.”

She lights up. “Oh, really? He loves surprises! Did you go to school together?”

“Served together, actually,” B.J. gestures to the second photo, taps the glass over his face gently. “Thought I’d take the day and come say hello. Would you like to help me play a prank?”

“Only if it’s a fun one,” she sobers quickly. “Doctor Pierce doesn’t really like pranks.”

She says this with an unmistakable weight and B.J. files the information away for later.

“Never mean,” he assures. “How about we pretend I’m a patient . . .”

* * *

‘Lydia’, as she introduces herself while they hatch their scheme, leaves B.J.’s intake chart purposefully blank after reassurances that B.J. won’t let anything come of it.

“Hello, Mr. Smith? I’m Doctor Pierce, I understand you’ve been experiencing some discomfort?”

“It’s the damnedest thing, there’s this massive pain in my neck, started about 1952? I mean, I think it happened in Korea, got a sprain or something while carrying the weight of my bunkmate, this absolutely terrible surgeon named Hawkeye — ”

‘Doctor Pierce’ goes still, his back to the examination table, before spinning about-face on his heel — white coat flaring to reveal a very sensible button-down and slacks combo that causes B.J. to immediately reframe the man’s sense of style —staring in utter disbelief. B.J. only has a moment to take in his old friend, but he adores what he sees; maybe a bit softer than the photos in the waiting room would indicate, but that just means the man’s getting regular meals and taking care of himself.

“Beej?” Hawkeye breathes, the barest hint of delight edging out the shock.

“Present.” B.J. preens, immediately thrilled at Hawkeye’s reaction.

“B.J. Hunnicutt!” Hawkeye chortles, slapping a hand on his thigh before crossing the small room to take B.J. by the arms and shake him. “You son of a bitch, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I wanted to surprise you. Did it work?”

“Did it work, he asks,” Hawkeye, pulls away to give B.J. a once over before reaching to snatch the chart back, searching for his name. “Did it _work_? I can’t believe this, did you falsify medical records to fool me?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time! Hawk, look at you, you’re completely grey!” B.J. grins, trying not to seem overeager as he moves to pull Hawkeye into a hug that the man does not resist in the slightest.

“I’m old! What’s your excuse?”

Hawkeye laughs against the shoulder of B.J.’s coat, clutching his just as tightly as he had all those years ago on the chopper pad. Maybe harder still. B.J. can’t tell through the haze of his own desperation who, exactly, is grappling at who’s back.

“I need someone to tell me how your hairline has somehow stayed in the exact same spot for eighteen years,” Hawkeye insists. “Some part of me thought you might be palling around the Bay with a shiny scalp like Charles.”

“My hairline’s a demilitarized zone. Treaty’s hanging in my washroom.”

Hawkeye pulls back with a relieved chuckle, clasps his hands on B.J.’s shoulders; again, B.J. thinks there could be something more to the motion, a precursor to something else far more intimate if things had gone differently between them.

“God, it’s great to see you,” he sighs, unable to stop smiling as he drags B.J. back into a corridor while Lydia tries to get his attention. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? C’mon to my office, before I debase myself in front of my staff.”

“Oh, wait, Doctor Pierce?”

“Lydia, Tony can cover the physicals, he owes me for last week and I know he’s just in his office napping. Have you met B.J.?”

“Yes, we just met, did you like the surprise?” She asks, causing Hawkeye to turn on B.J. with a sly grin. “And, no, you told me to remind you that Mr. Hoskins rescheduled, and Mrs. Vandermen cancelled because Amy had a recital, so you actually have the afternoon free.”

“You mean I can take a half-day? Lydia, you are a _gem_.”

Lydia lights up at the praise in a manner that tells B.J. she’s used to positive reinforcementfrom her employer, and the knowledge that Hawkeye’s still an everyday good person puts a familiar warmth in his chest.

Some small part of him was concerned — had always been concerned — that Hawkeye’s long period of radio silence had been indicative of a much larger problem far beyond B.J.’s own emotional missteps.

“I have questions — so many questions,” Hawkeye rambles, jacket thrown over his arm as he leads B.J. out the front entrance, right past the ‘Fishmarket’ sign B.J. so desperately wants to inquire after, and around the back of the building to a small gravel lot. “How long are you here? Did Erin come? She mentioned she wanted to look at post-graduate programs —“

“Just how long have you been talking to my daughter?”

The question isn’t aggressive or accusatory, at least, B.J. doesn’t mean it to be, but Hawkeye fumbles with his keys, and even with the distance between them the anxious incoordination is something unexpected. “Not long,” he answers, with an edge of hesitancy. “Honestly, I didn’t realize you didn’t know we were talking until she mentioned something about having to dig-up my address. Next time I wrote, I sent the note for you.”

The note B.J. still hadn’t responded to, instead deigning to travel 3000 miles to ‘surprise’ an old friend he hasn’t spoken to in eighteen years. “I thought this might be more dramatic,” B.J. apologizes, gesturing to his own car. “In a good way, I mean.”

“Oh, it is,” Hawkeye assures, his nervousness lessening into something more relieved. “Best prank anyone’s pulled on me a long, long time. You don’t know your way around, you want a ride? I promise to be a perfect gentleman.”

B.J. stiffens involuntarily at the casual flirting, but manages to recover himself quickly. “Only if you buy me dinner,” he offers, wondering if there’s actually enough distance between their shared trauma that Hawkeye doesn’t remember what ruined them.

“I’d be offended if you hadn’t made that assumption. Where are you staying?”

“Uh,” B.J. lifts his hand to point, dropping it again when he remembers his plan never progressed past ‘ _find Hawkeye’_. To his credit, the man himself waves away the indecision, recognizing it immediately for what it is.

“Grab your bag, you can crash at my place.”

“What about my car?”

Hawkeye looks down each end of the quiet street with an air of conspiracy before jutting his chin B.J.’s direction. “It’s Spruce Harbor, Beej. I think you’ll be alright leaving her unattended overnight.”

* * *

Before B.J. can find his bearings, Hawkeye is puling into the parking lot of a small restaurant on the harbor that seems to be more bait shack than eatery. Not long after, they’re settled across from one another on cracked red vinyl cushions that squeak every time either of them makes an attempt at moving. The domesticity is bizarre. Sure, they’d had their shared moments of normalcy taking R+R in Tokyo, but this is the first chance B.J.’s ever had to see Hawkeye in his natural environment. Relaxed. Joyful. _Safe_.

“Well, c’mon proud papa, show me the photos.”

B.J. blinks back to himself. “I don’t have —“

Hawkeye settles him with an unimpressed look and makes a grabbing motion across the table top; B.J. relents, pulling a graduation photo from his wallet to hand over.

“— _Fine._ ”

“God, she’s gorgeous, Beej.” Hawkeye praises, eyes wide and adoring like she’s family and not just the grown child of a long estranged friend. “Like the best parts of you and Peg all rolled into one.”

“She’s pretty great. Smart as a whip, too.”

“Gathered that from her letters. She seriously looking at going into medicine?”

“Flip-flopping between pre-med and psychology, which is equally terrifying. Still can’t believe she was writing you,” B.J. sighs, taking back the small photo. “Not necessarily sorry, though. Can’t be mad for breaking the detente. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’s going on in your world? Is there a Mrs. Doctor Pierce you’ll have to explain my surprise appearance to? Do you have kids?”

“Yeah, I mean,” Hawkeye turns his attention down to his menu and clears his throat. “No, well, who doesn’t want kids?”

Hawkeye’s fidgeting becomes noticeable, his knee bouncing under the table. B.J. resists the urge to trap his wild leg between his ankles like he used to when Hawkeye’s anxieties threatened to vibrate breakfast right off the mess table. The question came from nowhere and B.J. regrets it immediately; it’s not lost on B.J. that the man across from him is pushing 50, if he isn’t there already, and he’s unmarried if his bare ring finger is anything to go by. There’s no need to push so hard when the answers are right in front of him, but he needs to know if he’s completely screwed before they hit the threshold of the Pierce home — if there’s a gorgeous woman waiting at home for her loving husband and B.J.’s turned the tables on the same relationship dynamic that nearly ruined him in ’53.

“Sadly, there isn’t a Mrs. Pierce.” Hawkeye admits, an edge of _something_ in his tone that makes B.J. feel as nervous as he does relieved. “Few long term things, was engaged for a hot second in ’64, but Evelyn was more of a free spirit and decided she’d rather not settle down in Maine.”

“Evelyn?” B.J. echoes, fighting disappointment.

“She was a nurse in the Pacific, a teacher in Boston. You’d have liked her, Margaret introduced us.”

There’s a weight in Hawkeye’s tone, an implication of some kind that for the life of him B.J. can’t suss out. What’s worse, he knows in his gut that this isn’t the time or place to pry further.

“Speaking,” Hawkeye straightens in his seat, the vinyl squeaking as he adjusts. “How are things with you and Peg?”

“We’re separated, actually.” B.J. offers, surprised that Erin hadn’t let on to that fact in her communications.

“Oh. Since _when_?”

While Hawkeye’s tone is shocked, he’s not surprised enough to imply this is wholly new information. B.J. wonders just how many letters Erin managed to fire off before Hawkeye cracked wise.

“Ah, couple years? Nothing official. We had this plan to stick it out until Erin was through school, to make things easier.”

“And now she’s in college. I can’t believe that. You two were the great American love story.”

“That was the plan,” B.J. hides a self-indulgent grin behind his coke at the absurdity, but his angle on the wide-rimmed glass only seems to amplify the nervousness of the sound. “We’re alright, though. Honestly, after Korea we’d both changed so much we realized we were better friends than partners. Didn’t Erin tell you any of this in her letters?”

A dimple in Hawkeye’s cheek flares for a moment when B.J. mentions Korea changing him, his jaw tensing, but it’s gone quick as a flash.

“Surprisingly, no. Everything was above board, just school, a few questions about Korea for some school project — “ there it is again, that brief hesitation “ — will say when I saw the return on the first one I was concerned something had happened to you; luckily, it was just a lovely young woman inquiring about colleges and trying not to seem like she was prying for information. Even though she was.”

“She worries about me.”

“I can tell.”

They lapse into a gentle silence while they wait to order, giving B.J. a moment to look around the small eatery, decorated in old fishing nets and nautical baubles — something quaint that would be kitschy anywhere but New England.

“What are you getting?” B.J. asks.

“What are _we_ getting, you mean,” Hawkeye corrects, gaze flicking up from his menu with and ease that implies he’s only holding the paper to put a physical barrier between them. “How hungry are you?”

“Starved.”

Hawkeye’s eyes light up. “Well then,” he waves over the waitress. “MaryAnne, this is my good friend, Doctor B.J. Hunnicutt, and he’s never been to Maine. Never even been to the glorious North East, and this is his first time eating fresh seafood.”

B.J. opens his mouth to protest and Hawkeye holds up a steady finger to silence him.

“California doesn’t count.”

“It absolutely does.”

Hawkeye swings his finger toward MaryAnne, who concedes, shoving her notepad and pencil into her apron pocket with a long suffering, “It really doesn’t.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

“Works it is,” she nods to Hawkeye, casting an appraising look at B.J.. “Hope you’re hungry, Doctor.”

“Oh, he is,” Hawkeye chortles, rubbing his hands together excitedly, immediately looking years younger. “You’re going to love this.”

The meal arrives with such prodigious ease that B.J. can come to no other conclusion than Hawkeye is so well recognized, the kitchen began prepping his order the moment they’d stepped through the front door. A seemingly endless stream of plates begins to cover the entire lacquered table-top, Hawkeye pointing at each dish with unbridled glee. “Whole lobster, oysters, lobster rolls, haddock chowder, steamed clams, steamed mussles, fried shrimp, crab cakes. Where to start, where to _start_?”

“I feel like you’re going to have to roll me out of here.”

“My good sir, that is the plan!”

“Well then, I think this calls for a toast,” B.J. reaches for an oyster, Hawkeye follows, a delightful furrow of confusion between his silvery brows as he lifts a shell and B.J. taps them gently with a soft _clack_. “To old friends and nosy daughters.”

“To unexpected surprises and good food,” Hawkeye adds, snatching a bit of lemon to squeeze over both shells. “Bottoms up.”

They make it though the oysters without incident, but around the crab cakes, locals begin to wander up to the table to say hello to Hawkeye, and for the next thirty minutes B.J. barely gets a word in edgewise between Hawkeye’s endless praising of the food and near constant interruption from patients and friends alike that are curious as to who is visiting. The answers vary. Old war buddy. Old friend. As the meal rolls on, B.J. content to stuff his face with the softest, sweetest lobster he’s ever tasted, the descriptors begin to change. Best friend. Best surgeon. World-renowned prankster. War hero. _Fink_.

“This bastard saved my life more times than I can count, I’d have gone nuts over there if not for B.J..” Hawkeye praises, extolling upon the shack’s genuinely interested staff several stories B.J. himself has long since forgotten. B.J. racks up more compliments than he’s heard in years, and he feels like he’s floating when a young man finally asks B.J. about any fun stories about ‘Doctor Ben’.

“Oh, now, there isn’t time in the day for all the stories I’ve got,” B.J. says honestly, patting clarified butter from his lips, resolutely not looking at his companion because there’s no way he’ll be able to tell the truth if he can see Hawkeye is watching. “I could tell you about the time he commandeered a tank to draw enemy fire away from a hospital, how we helped a North Korean POW escape enemy territory— ”the kid’s eyes go wider “— there was that time he foiled a spy from arresting the wrong man. How he invented new surgical procedures that probably saved thousands of soldiers’ lives. There isn’t enough time in the day to tell you about his adventures. If you can imagine it, he probably did it.”

 _“Seriously?_ You really knew a spy?”

“Dumbest man I’ve ever met,” Hawkeye says, clearly taken aback by the turn of the conversation. “How about I’ll tell you about him next time you come in. David, tell your mother I say hello, will you?”

B.J. turns back to Hawkeye, finds the man watching him as David says his goodbyes. “Hell of a story you just cooked up, there.” Hawkeye says softly, and B.J. isn’t certain what emotion is coloring the man’s voice. It certainly isn’t humility.

“What story? It’s all true.”

Hawkeye goes quiet, then, glancing out the window, and B.J. kicks the man’s leg lightly under the table, bringing him back to the moment.

“I just had to sit here and let you gush about me to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in this town, I tell one kid about you and you clam up.”

“It’s different.”

“It isn’t.”

Hawkeye relents, blowing a breath before snatching a hunk of lobster from the end of B.J.’s roll. “Fine,” he grouses with an air of defeat. “I’m just not used to talking about myself like that.”

“I get it. Especially now, right? With all this Vietnam bullshit.”

Hawkeye’s expression goes instantly stormy. “Don’t get me started, Beej. I won’t stop.”

“Did Erin mention that’s how I ended up telling her about our time overseas? She dragged me to a protest at Golden Gate Park and I spent the evening swapping war stories with a bunch of vets. Even met someone that said he knew you,” Hawkeye keeps his eyes on B.J. as he sucks the meat out of a lobster claw. It’s endearing in a manner that absolutely isn’t endearing. “Guy named Cartwright? Said you were in his tank battalion in ’45.”

Hawkeye inhales sharply, and immediately begins coughing. Without thinking, B.J. moves to slide out of the booth for a Heimlich, if necessary, but Hawkeye waves him off, eyes streaming, and reaches for his water. “That was,” Hawkeye gasps between wet, hacking coughs, “the absolute last thing I expected to come out of your mouth. _Jesus, Mary, and Joseph_.”

“Didn’t realize I’d found your self destruct button, there,” B.J. tries to counterbalance the moment with levity, backtracking his sudden discomfort. “But that answers my question. I wasn’t sure he had the right guy. Called you Big Benjy and said you were from Vermont.”

“Oh, he _would_ ,” Hawkeye scowls, wiping his eyes with a clean napkin. “That man was an ass of the highest caliber.”

“He made it seem like you two got on alright.”

The scowl, somehow, goes deeper.

“. . . and I’m guessing that’s why you never told me about your time in WWII?”

“I was only deployed for a couple months, spent most of the time on bases, it felt disingenuous to talk about it when I saw so little combat.”

It sounds like a lie, because it probably is.

“Just seems weird you never mentioned it,” B.J. shrugs. “Kinda thought I knew everything about you.”

“You know everything that matters,” Hawkeye says reflexively, with a surprising heat, before immediately looking away as if he’s misstepped.

“Do I?”

“ _Do_ _you_?”

“Oh, no you don’t,” B.J. cautions, realizing where this is all headed and graciously allowing Hawkeye to take the escape. “Not this again. You’re not getting the last word.”

“I’m not?”

“No.”

“This is news to me.”

The good humor is back by inches, an indulgent grin creeping across Hawkeye’s face and they _banter_ , drifting to familiar topics of conversation. Work. Patients. Politics. B.J. thinks he’s got the upper hand when he slips to the restroom and discreetly moves to pay for the meal, but MaryAnne declines; their bill has already been covered by one of the many patrons regaled by Hawkeye’s stories.

“This happens a lot,” she explains while Hawkeye is preoccupied pulling on his jacket. _“_ He rarely pays, don’t worry.”

“I just thought I was special,” B.J. winks, palming the money into her hand anyway as a grateful tip. “He’s that popular?”

“Don’t think there’s a soul in this town that isn’t fond of Doctor Pierce,” MaryAnne offers with a nod toward the cook, back behind the counter. The man gives B.J. an assessing look, as if sizing him up. B.J. isn’t used to receiving warnings, but this sure as hell feels like a warning.

“C’mon, Hunnicutt,” Hawkeye calls from the door, pulling their collective attention. “We’ve got places to be. Peter, knock it off. Beej is a good one, I’d stake my life on it.”

As they cross the gravel lot, B.J. asks, “What are you, some kind of mafia Don?”

“I wish. Small towns, you know?” Hawkeye brushes off the concern. “Everyone’s a little twitchy about outsiders.”

“Hawk. They were twitchy about _you_.”

“Alright, so I may have had some troubles a few years back, after the war.”

“Troubles?”

“A good chunk of the town got hit with a subversive rap because of,” Hawkeye hesitates, looking around, motioning for B.J. to get in the car. When they’re settled, doors shut, Hawkeye continues, “That congressman that got indicted when I was in Korea, Dad’s ‘friend’? Was from Spruce Harbor and McCarthy got him labeled a communist to keep the party from looking bad, whole town ended up under investigation.”

“And you?”

“Collateral damage.” Hawkeye shrugs in the affirmative. “It’s actually why I lost my post with the VA.”

“You were with the VA? _When_?”

“Oh, there aren’t enough hours in the day, Beej,” Hawkeye rubs his eyes. “How long are you here? We have so much to catch up on.”

“As long as you want.”

Hawkeye’s nervous fidgeting ceases and B.J. feels like he’s misstepped. “I’ve got a guest room,” he offers. “Three, actually. Well, two. One’s kind of a study, but —“

“I’d like to see your home.”

“I’d like to show you my home. It’s very homey.”

B.J. reaches for his seatbelt, not so much out of an abundance of caution as a desperate need to do something with his hands. Though there’s so much to talk about, so much ground to cover, they spend the rest of the short drive in silence.

* * *

Hawkeye’s house turns out to be a two story Colonial painted in white and pale blues with a large, detached garage, nestled on a residential street not far from his clinic. The house is larger than expected, as well, and B.J.’s couched concerns about Hawkeye’s own family dynamics return in force.

“I expected you by the water,” B.J. ponders as they pull up the drive. “Is this all just you?”

“No, no,” Hawkeye’s answering chuckle isn’t quite mirthless, but it’s definitely on that end of the spectrum. “And I was — for a bit, at least — by the ocean. After dad left it made more sense to live in town, be social. Part of me also wanted to stick it to Frank if we ever had another reunion, so I probably spent more than I needed to.”

B.J. hadn’t known Daniel was gone. If he had, he . . . he’d have done something. Reached out at least. “I’m so sorry,” B.J. stumbles. “When did he . . . ?”

Hawkeye blinks, startling.

“Oh! No, he’s not dead! He’s in Florida!”

_“Florida?”_

“Met a lovely lady when she sprained her ankle on vacation up here and they ended up hitting it off. One day he handed me the key to his practice and said he was going to Miami. We see each other a few times a year.”

“I went by your place to see you — you’re renting out his house?”

“Oh, no, that’s mine, too.” Hawkeye kills the engine. “I think I’ll probably end up offering this place to the Smiths when they have their second kid. That cabin is not Dr. Spock approved. I don’t really need all this space, anyway.”

Hawkeye tries to help B.J. with his bag, but there’s only the one and it seems disingenuous to make his unexpected host play, well, host. Once he gets the front door open, B.J. follows close behind and finds a well-appointed receiving room, something B.J.’d more expect to find in a Sears catalog than in the home of a man who once gleefully christened his camp barracks ‘The Swamp’. There’s a piano near the fireplace and several paintings of warm ocean scapes that remind B.J. more of California than northern Maine; but he hasn’t spent enough time on the east coast to confirm that assumption.

“I can see from your silence that you’re awestruck by my interior decorating skills.”

“Tell the truth,” B.J. chides. “You purchased this place furnished.”

“A gentleman never asks and a lady never tells. Go ahead,” Hawkeye makes a shooing gesture, nearly losing his grip on his keys. “Go snoop! I know you want to. There’s like four rooms up there, pick one.”

“What if I pick yours?” B.J. calls, already halfway up the stairs. He doesn’t mean for the question to be salacious, he’s genuinely curious, but when he glances back down the stairs, suitcase in hand, Hawkeye’s cheeks have flushed the tiniest bit pink.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve found Goldilocks in my bed.”

B.J. can tell by the delay that Hawkeye’s retort was _not_ the first thing that came to the man’s mind, and B.J. quietly vows to break B.F. Pierce of the bad habit of thinking before he speaks.

“Do you mind if I freshen up? I feel like I haven’t have a decent shower in a week.”

“ _Mi casa es su casa_.” Hawkeye announces grandly. “Take your time, I’ll get started on dinner.”

“Dinner? We just ate!”

“And you’ll eat again,” Hawkeye swears with unexpected seriousness. “I’ll wait for you to finish your evening ablutions.”

“It’s barely _three_.”

“Actually, with the time difference, it’s barely noon.”

“And yet you’re making dinner,” B.J. checks his watch as if that will somehow disprove what Hawkeye’s just said, and, to his own surprise, he yawns. Which cannot be a good sign. “Can you even cook?”

“How dare you. B.J. Hunnicutt, you are a guest in this home,” Hawkeye accuses, raising his voice with no heat behind the words. “Go wash up! Or take a nap so I can frantically hide the evidence of my misdeeds since you neglected to give me warning you were coming. Be gone with you, Sir!”

B.J. lifts his hand to offer a majestic, grande dame wave, and backs up the stairs. It’s only when Hawkeye is out of sight that B.J.’s heart leaps into his throat and he gasps, taking the first moment he’s had alone to process the last few hours. It’s good — so much better than he imagined — and but there’s so much unknown territory that he’s terrified of what’s coming next. There have been hints, so many hints, so many ways for moments to be interpreted, but at the end of it all there’s the knowledge that while Hawkeye is currently single, there was almost a Mrs. Evelyn Pierce and god knows how many other women that have found comfort in this home. He doesn’t have time to pry; opting to throw his case onto the first empty bed he finds before absconding to the bathroom, fighting his own version of a panic attack, turning on the water to mask the sounds of him counting his breaths as he rests on the closed lid of the toilet. “You can do this,” he whispers, catching his reflection in the mirror. “You came all this way, you can do this, Hunnicutt.”

Beneath his feet, B.J. can hear the soft, muffled noises of frantic tidying, and he wonders if Hawkeye is telling himself the same damn thing.

* * *

* * *

“I thought you drowned,” Hawkeye chides when B.J. comes down the stairs, setting aside a book and rising from the couch like a father waiting for his teenage daughter to return from an evening out. B.J. would know, he’s done the same many a time. “All squeaky clean?”

“Even washed behind my ears.”

“Great. That’s . . . great. Can I get you a drink? Coffee, or something? I don’t have that much in the way of spirits.”

At some point, Hawkeye clearly found time to change, and the man is wearing a loose checkered flannel shirt over a pair of denim jeans that look almost new. His hair is also a touch neater and the man has almost certainly shaved. Maybe B.J. spent a little too much time in the bathroom after all.

“You got all gussied up for little ol’ me? Hawk, I’m flattered.”

“I’ll have you know this is my evening attire.” Hawkeye defends. “For guests,” he amends at B.J.’s knowing look. “You are a guest, aren’t you?”

“I am?”

“Yes.”

“I’d take a beer if you’ve got one. I have a feeling we’ll be up late talking, might as well get a start on it.”

Again, the nervousness in Hawkeye’s posture breaks into something relieved, his shoulders less hunched, his expression more open; B.J. gets the distinct impression that every time he disappears from sight, Hawkeye must be reminded of their shared history as readily as B.J. himself is. Treading water through social niceities to avoid the sharks of their mutual indiscretions.

When they pass through the kitchen, Hawkeye pulls a lone bottle from the fridge and guides B.J. out onto the back porch — shielded from the afternoon sun on the opposite side of the house, it’s almost chilly. They settle into a pair of Adirondack chairs on the back porch — one much more faded from use than the other, B.J. notes — and Hawkeye flashes him a fond smile, something just shy of giddy, his gaze warm with something too close to awe for comfort.

“The last time I saw you — ”

“I was out of my mind?” Hawkeye smiles. “Absolutely.”

There’s no easy way to broach the topic of their parting. On the whole, it’s a rather forgivable exchange — two men, finally heading home from war, exhausted, fragile, having one last row before parting to live out their lives on opposite ends of a continent. He knows there’s more between them, even still. The old wound has long since healed, but there’s still a ugly scar. Proof they meant something to one another beyond simple friendship. B.J. resists the urge to reach for the dog tags beneath his shirt, the pin on a grenade that is what could have been. God willing, what might still be.

“Jesus, Beej. I genuinely thought I’d never see you again.”

“That makes two of us.”

“DOCTOR BEN!”

B.J. turns toward the voice and finds a gaggle of youths clamoring over the backyard fence, resting their arms on the wooden planks, some waving to get attention.

“DAVID SAID YOU DROVE A TANK OVER A SPY.”

“Oh, now, see what you’ve done?” Hawkeye chides before calling out, “YOU’LL BLOW MY COVER IF YOU KEEP YELLING LIKE THAT!”

The boys, to their credit, scatter, and B.J. gets the distinct impression that Hawkeye having loud conversations with neighbor children is a common enough occurrence that he could be accused of being a spy in broad daylight and not arouse any actual suspicion.

“CIA or CID?” B.J. questions seriously.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Hawkeye grins. “I was a CPA the whole time.”

“Certified Pain in my Ass?” B.J. inquires, cracking the lid off his beer only to note that Hawkeye’s still cradling a mug of coffee. “You’re not drinking?”

“You wouldn’t know,” Hawkeye shakes his head, setting aside the mug to pulls a cigarette case out of his back pocket. “I’ve been sober about nine years. Turns out drinking home-brewed jet for fuel three-and-a-half years straight is actually bad for your liver.” Hawkeye pinches the cigarette between his lips, cocked to the left so he can keep speaking as he lights it; when the flame catches, B.J. realizes Hawkeye isn’t smoking tobacco. “Had to swap out some of my classic vices. Goodbye wine and women, hello reefer and . . .well, you can infer the rest.”

“Reefer is illegal, doctor.”

“Oh? Is it?”

He doesn’t exhale in B.J.’s face, nothing so crass, but he passes the joint easily like they’re not both men of a certain age. B.J., somewhat to his own surprise, doesn’t hesitate to take a long drag; immediately regretting it when the smoke burns his esophagus and Hawkeye dissolves into familiar peals of laughter, stomping one foot on the porch in delight as B.J. hacks and coughs. B.J. had forgotten how Hawkeye laughed with his entire body, howling like a court jester’s ghost has taken residence in ribcage and every comedic opportunity was a new chance to escape. He’d admire the reminder if only he could _breathe_. “It’s been a while,” he wheezes, smacking his fist against his sternum. “Can’t tell if it’s good or not.”

“Oh, it’s good. It’s mine, after all.”

“Yours?”

“Few years back I spent some time getting my head on straight, did a little traveling and ended up at a commune or two when that was still something sane to do. Turns out I’ve got a bit of green thumb,” Hawkeye holds the smoldering joint up to the light, shoulders still jumping with giggles at B.J.’s expense. “Green thumb and a bad back.”

“Warned you about your posture, you hunchback.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hawkeye’s expression has gone misty, his relieved smile threatening to slide right off the side of his face. “God, I missed you,” he sighs, “can’t believe its been so long, and we’re just sitting here like no time’s passed at all. Even if you did get old.”

“ _I_ got old? Between the two of us, who’s hair is still the same color?”

“Between the two of us,” Hawkeye leans in, flashing a devilish grin, “who still _has_ hair?”

B.J.’d forgotten what it was like to banter with someone running at the same frequency —forgotten what it was like to banter with _Hawkeye_ — and he’s never wanted to kiss someone more in his entire life. Of course, then he manages to remember that Hawkeye’s been off living his entire life without B.J., without any _thought_ of seeing B.J. again. There’s a very real possibility that this moment of reconnection is surface level; that B.J.’s been romanticizing their shared history into something much larger than it ever really was.

“You’ve got me there,” B.J. admits, dragged unwittingly back into his own insecurities.

“Oh, Beej,” Hawkeye’s playfulness vanishes. “I didn’t mean that. You’re just as handsome as the day I met you.”

“You still think I’m handsome?”

That grin is back, flirty and the tiniest bit relieved. “Peter Fonda could roll up the drive and I wouldn’t give him a second look,” he drawls, eyes lidded with affection or drug, B.J. can’t tell.

“Oh, well, I don’t know if I can say the same. Man knows how to ride a bike.”

“I know how to ride.” Hawkeye perks up, and B.J. isn’t sure if he's being serious or if this is just another euphemism.

 _“Do you?_ ”

“I do, indeed. You inspired me to branch out into alternative means of transportation. In the event I’m ever stranded in the wilds again with a POW and no B.J. Hunnicutt to save me.”

“If I go look in the garage, I’m going to find a Schwinn with a little motor strapped to it, aren’t I?”

“That and a Triumph,” Hawkeye says smugly, exhaling a small cloud of white smoke that’s quickly carried away by the evening breeze.

“Bullshit.”

“I’ll show you! C’mon, you disappear for a hundred years, show up, smoke my grass and get sassy about my hobbies, see if I ask mom if you can sleep over —“

B.J. snatches the joint from Hawkeye’s hand and stamps it out in the ashtray.

“Garage. Now. If you’re lying to me — ”

“Rude, and I’m not! I swear.”

It quickly turns out that Hawkeye is not, in fact, lying. The two car garage is nearly empty, save for a large wooden tool bench, some fishing gear, and a near pristine, pearl-grey 1959 Triumph Bonneville.

“I don’t ride it much, anymore,” Hawkeye admits as B.J. kneels down to inspect the wheels. “Small-town doctor zipping around on a motorcycle is a fun look when you’re under forty, little less flattering when you’re pushing fifty.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” B.J. says absently, dulled in the face of such a gorgeous machine and the mental image of Hawkeye Pierce riding down a wooded Maine motorway. “I’d be pretty damn speechless if you rolled in on one of these. Did you have it imported? I thought this colorway was a UK limited run. Looks like she needs a little TLC, though, when was the last time you had her serviced?”

The impromptu inspection turns into a tune-up, and B.J.’s so thrilled to be in his element, so engrossed in the bike, that it takes a bit to notice Hawkeye’s fallen quiet behind him, dutifully handing over requested tools like they’re in surgery together again. It’s perfect. Absolutely every feeling B.J.’s been chasing for years rolled up into the most natural of interactions. B.J. asks for grease rag to wipe his hands. Hawkeye offers a torn strip of terry cloth.

Out of nowhere, sounding sober as the day they said their not-goodbyes on that strip of blood-soaked dirt in Korea, Hawkeye says, “Erin thought you were in love with me.”

For all of his dreaming, imagining how they’d finally find the time to hash things out after so many years apart, B.J. couldn’t have imagined he’d be on his knees in Hawkeye Pierce’s garage, wrist deep in the guts of a ’59 Triumph Bonneville, betrayed by his own flesh and blood.

“In her letter. Not the first one. I’m still not sure if I’m happy she reached out, because the fact that she had to meant you weren’t planning on speaking to me yourself.”

“I thought,” B.J. wipes his hand on a grease rag draped over the wheel, buying time he doesn’t need. “Well, truthfully, I don’t know what I thought. You turned me down, and when you didn’t reach out, I thought that meant I shouldn’t, either. ”

“. . . That’s not what happened.”

“So, you _didn’t_ tell me to pound sand that night?”

B.J. glances over his shoulder to find Hawkeye leaning against a work bench several feet away, arms crossed in a manner that doesn’t imply defensiveness so much as it does resignation. For the first time since they’ve reunited, B.J. feels the viscous heat of old anger just below the surface of his contentment; the wounded parts of him, decades old, itching for fresh satisfaction from a man that’s just admitted he remembers what he did and still can’t take ownership.

“I didn’t.” Hawkeye insists tersely. “It wasn’t like that.”

“I need _you_ to tell _me_ how you think we ended things, Hawk.”

Hawkeye worries his lip, looking anywhere but at B.J.. “Do you think you were the first married man to stumble into my arms?” He asks softly. “You weren’t even the first that _war_. You had a beautiful wife and a beautiful baby girl you couldn’t wait to get home to, I was just trying to mitigate the collateral damage from you having a full blown crisis —”

“Hawkeye, there was no crisis,” B.J. fights nervous laughter, rising to his feet and turning on the man he’s dreamed of confronting — of holding, kissing, possibly murdering— for so long.“You didn’t give me a chance to explain. Then you refused to speak to me.”

“Because I actually _cared_ about you.”

“You had a real funny way of showing it.”

“Maybe, I wanted a family, too.” Hawkeye interrupts. “Did you think about that? Maybe I wanted what you had, and I knew if I hung around you too long, I might try to steal it, and you’d probably have let me.”

The logic doesn’t track and B.J.’s on his heels trying to determine what Hawkeye’s actually implying.

“What does that — How? You’re not Peg’s type.”

“I’m _everyone’s_ type.” Hawkeye glowers. “And that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what the hell do you mean, Hawk? Maybe the reason I had a family was because getting married was the only way Peg and I could have a kid. Maybe, you’re not the first man who’s arms I’ve stumbled into, either!”

Hawkeye looks away, and whatever vindication B.J. thought he might find pales in comparison to the guilt he feels at Hawkeye’s obvious discomfort. He has a right to be angry, of course he does, but he was also the one following the guidebook of acceptable male Americana. What was Hawkeye supposed to think?

“You would have told me.” Hawkeye counters. “If that were true, you would have said something. You would have written, or called.”

“Would have told — I thought I did!” B.J. barks incredulously, throwing his arms wide. “What man spends two years flirting with his bunkmate? Jesus, we kissed, Hawk! Full on necking; how many times did I watch you beat off before revelry? How many times did I let you watch _me_ — what part of that dynamic screams _heterosexual_?”

“Don’t turn this around on me.” Hawkeye cautions, expression going stormy. “You were never this clear about any of it. Every chance you had, you lamented being away from your beautiful family you were _dying_ to get home to. Every conversation —”

“Because it was a _war,_ Hawkeye!” B.J. shouts, unable to wade through niceties any longer. “Because we were living with Frank- _fucking_ -Burns and constantly under suspicion by everyone from the CIA to the CDC. I had to be a family man or they would have locked me up! No blue discharges, no Section 8s, just _Leavenworth_. When it was over, when it was _safe_ , when I told you that Peg understood and you could come home with me, you quoted Kipling and vanished! I told you I loved you and you _ran_ from me, so what was I supposed to think? That the sentiment was _returned_? ‘ _Oh, poor B.J. and his queer little crush, better let him down easy with a memento and never speak to him again’_.”

B.J.’s so lost in his own anger that he realizes he’s never seen Hawkeye look quite so devastated before, but he doesn’t care, he wants this to hurt Hawkeye as badly as it hurt him. And everything does _ache_. He showed Hawkeye who he really was, the man rejected him outright, and he never really recovered from that experience.

“B.F. Pierce,” Hawkeye swallows roughly, “circa 1953, was a head-case trying to drink himself to death while dodging congressional inquiries. Of course, I’m better, _now —_ I’m sane, again, if I ever was to begin with — but I wasn’t right, back then.”

“ _You_ were under investigation?” The fight leaves B.J., but only by inches. “I thought we stopped that.”

“Flagg managed to fire off a couple reports about the 4077th, but it’s not important right now,” Hawkeye runs a nervous hand through his silvering hair. “I’m trying to tell you that I . . . I didn’t know if it was _real_. At the end, even after staying in Seoul, I’d been seeing things, _hearing_ things; I couldn’t be sure our conversations were something that truly happened or if they were fever dreams I’d cooked up on my merry way to a psychotic break.”

“ _Hawk_.”

“And then, after I got home, I _couldn’t_ ,” Hawkeye swallows hard and B.J. catches the shine of his eyes in the late afternoon light. “I couldn’t bear to find out it wasn’t real. There was a chance, if I reached out to you, said the wrong thing, that I’d find out I’d made everything up, and you would be disgusted with me.” Hawkeye barks that hyena laugh of his and gives B.J. a pained, halfhearted glare. “Now, you’re here, and I get to find out that I did to you what I was terrified you’d do to me. And, now, I get an answer to a question I’ve been avoiding for two decades.”

“And what’s that?” B.J. breathes, hope rising in his throat as Hawkeye stands so close, on the verge of saying everything B.J.’s been wishing he had nearly two decades earlier.

“Did you mean it?” Hawkeye asks, just shy of desperate. “What you said in Guam — that you _loved_ me. Did you mean it?”

B.J. wants to scream until he’s blue in the face, _‘yes, yes, yes, of course I meant it’_ but now is not the time for the over-the-top declarations of a much younger man. Instead, he straightens up, meets Hawkeye’s cautious gaze and says, “I did. I did, and I’ve never stopped.”

“I loved you, too.” Hawkeye admits, stricken, face crumpling in anguish before he hides behind his palms. “God, I’m so sorry, Beej. I’m so sorry I left you like that — ”

“No, no, don’t, Hawk,” B.J. crosses the space between them in a single stride, pulling Hawkeye into his arms, holding him tightly as he dissolves into sobs. “I love you,” B.J. whispers against Hawkeye’s scalp, fighting the tears burning hot behind his eyes. _“I love you, I love you, I love you._ I’ve never stopped, you hear me? Not once. _”_

This may not be the most brilliant thing to declare, given Hawkeye is clearly in the midst of blaming himself for the time lost between them, but B.J. just clutches the man tightly, terrified of letting go.

There’s a familiar muffled click under B.J.’s clothing as Hawkeye clutches at him, and the sound seems to bring the man out of his grief long enough to rest a palm on B.J.’s sternum, pressing the tags into his chest.

“Why are you . . . “

B.J. tugs the chain above his collar so Hawkeye can take in the small token of their shared history.

“I don’t wear them every day, I’m not that obsessed with you. More of a good luck charm for this whole visit to go well.”

 _“Liar,”_ Hawkeye accuses wetly, running his thumb over his own name before sliding the tag to the side and stiffening as he reads B.J.’s tag.

“ _Ta-da,_ ” B.J. whispers, pressing his lips to Hawkeye’s hairline as the man bristles in his arms like a Saguaro cactus. “Satisfied?”

“ _You rat bastard,_ ” Hawkeye snarls, still weeping openly. “ _Benjamin_? Your real name is _Benjamin_? All this time we’ve had the same goddamn name?”

“You could have found out a whole lot sooner.”

“Oh, god, I _know_ , what do we do?” Hawkeye sniffs hard, wiping at his face with the sleeve of his shirt.“I mean, I know what we _do,_ but what do we _do_?”

“We could worry about it tomorrow,” B.J. suggests.

“Okay, but what do we do _right now_?” Hawkeye questions, clearly harboring some ideas already as he gestures between them. “Like, _tonight._ ”

B.J. opens his mouth, closes it again, and heads back toward the house.

“Wait — Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back, I’m just going to the bathroom.”

“Now? Why?”

“What, are you afraid I’m going to flee into the night?”

“A little, yes.”

Hawkeye follows him back through the kitchen and up the stairs, assuring him the whole way that he’s not going anywhere, he’s not planning to go anywhere. When they reach the ensuite bathroom together, with it’s flimsy sliding door, B.J. turns to Hawkeye to ask, “Would you like to hold my hand?”

Immediately, without hesitation, Hawkeye leers and teases in his best Groucho Marx voice, “I’d really like to hold something else.” Then, his grin drops and he goes pink with embarrassment, lifting a hand to shield his face from scrutiny as B.J. laughs. “I am so sorry, I haven’t done that in years.”

“What, be a creep?”

“You’re here for eight hours and I’m 30 again.”

“That was the plan, Hawk.”

B.J. leaves the door open as he digs out his Dopp kit, flips on the water, and proceeds to brush his teeth. “You still do that ten count when you brush?” He asks, mumbling through a mouthful of foam before he spits and reaches for a bottle of Listerine he’d seen while snooping earlier.

“Maybe.” Hawkeye’s eyes narrow as he steps into the small space, crowding close by necessity. “Why?”

“Show me.”

B.J. plucks the lone red toothbrush from the cup with his free hand and hands it over before gargling.

“I have half a cup of coffee and a slice of apple crumb cake waiting downstairs and you want me to obliterate my tastebuds for the evening out of, what, exactly? _Propriety_?”

“No longer am I amazed at how you can fail to grasp the obvious,” he smiles into the mirror, checking for any lingering bits of foulness, watching Hawkeye relent and squeeze a bit of paste onto his brush. “What have we been doing all day?”

“Talking. Eating.”

“Exactly. And what have we been eating? Shellfish. Coffee. Assorted pungent local delicacies — ” Hawkeye’s still watching him, and B.J. counts the strokes, relieved to see the pattern is the same as it was years ago “— The point, good sir, is that I’d like to spend the evening tasting _you_ , and not what you ate today. I assume you’d appreciate the same forethought.”

Hawkeye’s hand stills, caught on stroke eight. “Oh-ho, don’t make this romantic, you son of a bitch,” he accuses around the head of the brush, foam gathering at the corners of his lips. “Not on my watch.”

“I can make it _less_ romantic.”

Hawkeye spits and rasps _‘how’_ , cupping water in his palm to rinse. There’s such a comfort in the banality of the gesture that B.J. can’t help but stand still to watch as the man he loved once, and will love again, casts a grimace to the mirror, checking for anything glaringly unromantic.

“Well,” B.J. starts, waiting for Hawkeye to grab another handful of water. “I could have asked if you’ve had a colonic recently.”

“You are actually the worst,” Hawkeye chokes. “How did I forget this about you?”

“Blocked it out, probably.”

“Careful, or I might just do it again.”

B.J. slides up behind Hawkeye, still half bent over the sink, and wraps his arms around the man’s middle, locking his wrists before resting his cheek against the curve of Hawkeye’s scapula.

“Hey,” Hawkeye breathes, not dislodging him. “You okay back there?”

“Peachy.” B.J. breathes, adjusting to try and catch Hawkeye’s heartbeat before lifting his chin to meet Hawkeye’s gaze in the mirror. “I’m sorry it took so long. We both made assumptions. I could have written just as easily as you. Called. Made some gesture.”

“That’s the funny thing about fear, I guess,” Hawkeye turns his head a touch to look at B.J. over his shoulder. “Makes it really hard to look at a situation rationally.”

“We spent a whole war being afraid and rational.”

“That’s medicine, _work_ ,” Hawkeye chides. “There’s nothing rational about love, especially not this variety of it.”

B.J, straightens and leans in, Hawkeye reaching up with one free hand to hold B.J. in place to meet him halfway. His lips are soft, and he tastes like spearmint.

* * *

* * *

“I haven’t done this in a long time,” B.J. admits.

“What, you think I’ve been going out on the regular?”

“Haven’t you? Handsome, mature, well-to-do doctor with a thriving practice,” B.J. praises, mouthing kisses along the column of Hawkeye’s throat. “Single or not, you should be drowning in propositions.”

“Alright, maybe a little,” Hawkeye admits sheepishly, angling up into the attention. “But my days of lechery are behind me.”

“That’s a real shame,” B.J. laments, nipping at Hawk’s earlobe and earning a surprised groan from his partner. “Alert the presses, Benjamin Franklin Pierce is off the market and _chaste_.”

“Only one of those things is accurate.”

“Alright, Hawk, how do you want to do this?”

B.J. pushes up onto his hands, thoroughly untrusting of his own stamina given his level of extreme interest in the man beneath him. Hawkeye’s gaze goes unfocused, staring at the ceiling, clearly lost in thought before he blinks back to himself and says, “I don’t have condoms or enough lubricant to last the weekend.”

“So, hands and mouths tonight, hit the pharmacy in the morning?” B.J. reasons, leaning in to chase a kiss, capturing Hawkeye’s lips.

“Rubber gloves,” Hawkeye pants, breaking away from B.J.’s assault. “I have everything at the clinic, we don’t need to go shopping.”

“That’s great.”

B.J. adjusts his position and grinds his pelvis down against Hawkeye’s, the friction pulling a high whine from _someone’s_ throat — B.J. would like to think it was Hawkeye, unable to control himself, but he knows he’s just as likely the culprit.

“Knew you were big,” Hawkeye shudders, lifting a thigh up to put welcome pressure between B.J.’s legs. “It was one thing to see you soft in the showers, in the mornings, those huge feet of yours, I _knew_.”

“And you’ll keep knowing,” B.J. swears, reaching between them to take Hawkeye in hand, stroking hard until he’s writhing beneath him, bucking up for more contact. After a moment, B.J. feels Hawkeye shift beneath him, pushing up, and B.J. quickly finds himself on his back, blinking up at Hawkeye, grinning mischievously down at him.

“Your turn, Darling.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” B.J. groans as Hawkeye shimmies down his torso, peppering kisses along his abdomen before stroking him gently, then — “Ahhh, Hawk, wait!”

It might be a minute, it might be five, either way, he doesn’t last. There isn’t even enough time to warn his partner before B.J. is finishing, hand fisted in Hawkeye’s hair as he bucks into the heat of the man’s mouth.

“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” B.J. pants, thighs shaking, horrified on a number of counts when Hawkeye pulls off, nose twitching as he reaches for a tissue to spit into. “I didn’t —”

“Beej, don’t be sorry,” Hawkeye rallies with a content smile, lifting his other shining hand to show what must be his own release, also quickly wiped away with that same handy bit of tissue. ”Eighteen years of foreplay does not a marathon evening make.”

* * *

* * *

The master bedroom is on the west side of the house and B.J. watches a sunrise in half measure, drawing his fingers idly though his partner’s hair as the man slumbers, pillowed on B.J.’s chest. There are precious few minutes left before the world will creep back in on them, it’s all B.J. can do to keep his attention on the feeling of lying in a warm bed beneath a warm body he’s been dreaming about since ’52.

“Don’t move, okay?” Hawkeye whispers, breath tickling the hairs on B.J.’s chest. _“_ Because if you move, I’m going to wake up, and I don’t want that to happen.”

B.J. tightens his fingers at the request, keeping Hawkeye in place, the man, in turn, wraps his lanky arms around B.J., slipping under his armpits to lock them together.

“You’re not dreaming, Hawk.”

The man makes a miserable sound, caught between a tired groan and a sob.

This early, this emotionally exhausted, B.J. rests his head back against his pillow and stares at the ceiling until he can feel the morning air cool the tears streaking back into his hairline. He’s not even sad. He’s happy. So very happy.

Hawkeye shimmies up, slowly, carefully, to bring them face to face.

“You’re crying.”

“Guess so.”

There must not be anything in his tone to cause concern because Hawkeye’s features soften into something almost fond before he eases down, pressing their foreheads together, allowing them to breathe the same air, exist in the same small moment.

“Still don’t want to wake up?”

“I think we might be alright, now.”

If possible, B.J. settles into the mattress and allows himself to go limp, boneless, adjusting to spread his legs so there’s a place for Hawkeye to settle comfortably, and Hawkeye follows suit; easing down with a consideration that reminds B.J. they’re both men of a certain age. B.J. wraps his arms around Hawkeye once more, holding him as they breathe, too occupied with enjoying the moment to find cause for conversation. There will be time for that later, time for navigating the logistics of a relationship still split between coasts, but at least now there’s something for B.J. to anticipate. A benchmark of potentially delirious joy.

A thought comes. Then, another.

B.J. turns his head and manages to press a kiss to the shell of Hawkeye’s ear; earning a muffled, if pleased, hum from his partner. Hawkeye’s arms end up between B.J.’s back and the bedding, until he’s got two warm hands cradling the back of his head, fingers scratching gently at the base of his scalp in a manner that makes B.J.’s toes curl.

“Doctor Pierce?” B.J. whispers — gently, formally — earning a curious, questioning hum from the man in question. “Do you think your practice has room for a visiting physician? I’ve found myself with a curious need to stay in Spruce Harbor for the foreseeable future.”

“Ah, an extended residency. I’ll have to check with the partners,” Hawkeye whispers against B.J.’s collarbone, before falling silent. B.J. counts the seconds. One. Two. Three. “Amazing,” Hawkeye says. “The Pierce Board of Medical Tomfoolery never makes unanimous decisions. You should feel honored.”

“I am, I am. I’d like to thank the AMA, and my daughter, who I’m just realizing I’m going to need to call and inform about all of this.”

Hawkeye hides his laughter in the hollow of B.J.’s throat. Inching higher and higher until they’re back at eye level and appropriate range for kissing, but Hawkeye holds his gaze, eyes heavy with sleep and raw affection.

“What _are_ you going to tell her?”

B.J. brushes back the fringe of silvering hair that’s fallen into Hawkeye’s eyeline, memorizing the lines on the man’s face, so different from what he’d remembered but still so wonderfully familiar all the same.

“I’ll tell her what she deserves to hear. That she was right, and I couldn’t be more grateful to have raised a nosy, aggressively invasive child with little respect for personal or professional boundaries.”

“How about just saying _‘Thank you’?_ ” Hawkeye counters, pressing a kiss to the corner of B.J.’s lips before settling back down, chasing comfort. “That’s what I’m planning, at least.”

“Oh, there are plans, now?”

“So many,” Hawkeye teases. “Do you think she’ll like me? Erin?”

There’s an unexpected waver in Hawkeye’s voice that reminds B.J. that while he was trapped navigating the social labyrinth of a lavender marriage, Hawkeye was on the opposite end of the spectrum as a bachelor doctor desperately chasing normalcy.

“She already likes you, or she wouldn’t have reached out in the first place.” B.J. says carefully, the early morning calm allowing him to recall the fractured tales he’d shared with his young daughter, spun around exaggerated exploits of the infamous Hawkeye Pierce; before it had really settled in that they weren’t going to speak again and B.J. shelved the memories away as something shameful. “Besides. If she can call Peg’s girlfriend, ‘ _Aunt Elise_ ’, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble settling in. If that’s what you want.”

Hawkeye is silent on his chest, the only indication his thoughts are racing wildly being the way his fingers flex nervously against B.J.’s skin. “I do,” he says finally. “I always wanted to meet her, but I wasn’t — she was so small, I didn’t — ”

B.J. is overcome by a wave of grief so unexpectedly painful the only thing he can rationalize is to wrap himself around Hawkeye and pin him to the mattress, physically smothering him with every spare ounce of affection he can muster.

“She’s going to love you.” B.J. insists peppering kisses over Hawkeye’s face, until the man is actively trying to escape the onslaught. “She loves the water. She loves trees and mountains. She hates the military, she’s obsessed with anything and everything subversive. She’ll love you, because there’s nothing not to love, and you’ll love her, because she’s got no respect for authority and I once watched her eat three pounds of crab legs in a single sitting.”

“She’s perfect,” Hawkeye laughs, angling away from B.J.’s lips. “I’ll take delivery next week.”

“God, she probably wishes. She’d love it here.”

Hawkeye reaches up and holds B.J.’s head steady, hands clasped gently on his cheeks. At this angle, B.J. watches a myriad of emotions play across the man’s face, micro expressions running the gamut from devastation to delight and back again; beneath even that, the tiniest familiar shade of fear as his breath quickens.

“There is no possible way for you to comprehend how happy I am right now,” he whispers tightly, “no metric, no quantifiable scale, nothing, and I am legitimately terrified that if we leave this bed, it’s all going to disappear.”

Some part of B.J. had been waiting to see if Korea left it’s mark on Hawkeye the same way it did B.J., or any of the guys he’d found in the scant support groups masquerading as watering holes; here it is, and B.J. knows it’s only a matter of time before Hawkeye catches a glimpse of his own demons, as well.

“What do you need?”

Hawkeye’s lips twist in anguish. “I just need you to stay,” he whispers. “Please. Promise you’ll stay.”

“The whole of the Seventh Army couldn’t make me leave this bed, Hawk,” B.J. swears, easing to the side to cuddle close, content to wait out whatever dark patch Hawkeye’s stumbled into; keep waiting, if need be. He’s already invested years, what’s a few hours? “Whenever you’re ready, so am I.”

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *


End file.
